


“Essé Seltrin, Tenth Handmaiden in the Second Class for Padmé Amidala”

by Polgarawolf



Series: Star Wars: You Became to Me [14]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Autoerotic Asphyxiation, F/F, Handmaidens, Light Masochism, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), POV Original Character, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Sadism, War, War Crimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-09
Updated: 2007-10-09
Packaged: 2017-11-13 07:58:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/501231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polgarawolf/pseuds/Polgarawolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is fifteen random but chronological moments from the life of Essé Seltrin, who is, quite literally, the tenth handmaiden in the second training class of potential handmaidens chosen from among a large pool of applicants for the job for the newly elected Nabooian Queen Padmé Amidala. There is an actual story here – one small thread among the vast woven tapestry of life that is the living history of the galaxy, stretched out and twisted, knotted into the whole, curled down among the roots of time, connecting various moments together – but one must read between the lines to capture it. It is not precisely the truth, for the subtle story of these moments is sketched out here in words, and, in the sin of writing down a life, it inevitably changes the shape of things. But it is nevertheless a form of truth. (From a certain point of view . . . )</p>
            </blockquote>





	“Essé Seltrin, Tenth Handmaiden in the Second Class for Padmé Amidala”

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning:** This story functions as a sort of compressed codex for Essé Seltrin’s life, as she is going to be written (and referred to) in my not even nearly complete AU **Star Wars** series **_You Became to Me_**. If anything doesn’t make sense, please feel free to ask!
> 
>  **Author’s Notes: 1.)** Again, for those who are interested, this not-quite-a-story is compatible with my SW AU series **_You Became to Me_** , including my _Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith_ trio, if you squint at a couple of things sideways and view a few others solely through the lens of Essé Seltrin’s not entirely sane eyes. **2.)** Although this is technically modeled on a prompt set that I borrowed from somewhere or another on the LJ (I really don’t recall from where anymore, exactly, though if someone would like to set the record straight, I’ll add the info for the community in question here in my notes), it’s not meant to function as a response to the actual challenge associated with that set. I just used the specific prompts to give me a reason to string together a backstory of sorts for Essé. **3.)** Readers might want to consider the fact that Essé, like a lot of native Nabooians, is fairly strong in the Force, but that she hasn’t received any training whatsoever to speak of (and wouldn’t have from the Jedi even if she’d been given to the Temple as a child, seeing as how she’s a bit of a sadist and a rather aggressive sociopath and all) and so has no real conscious control over that sensitivity to the Force. **4.)** Readers interested in knowing who the physical models are for original characters like Essé should please consult the latest versions of my posted lists of cast original and EU characters and for handmaid(en)s and other important Nabooian characters, which are available on my LJ! For clarity's sake, though, please keep in mind that Essé is physically modeled on a teenaged Joanna "JoJo" Levesque. Also, please note that characters who may be alluded to but not referenced by name are considered too minor to be cast at this time, and readers should feel free to imagine them howsoever they wish! **5.)** Handmaidens often tend to pair off, as is the case here, with Essé Seltrin and Rosé Ganesa, a fellow handmaiden from the following training class (hence, the relationship label for original female characters and the underage warning). **6.)** Speaking of pairings, I've labeled this story to indicate Padmé Amidala's love for Sabé, because, even though it may not be specifically mentioned in this character study piece, handmaid(en)s know so much about their sworn Lady that readers can be certain that even someone like Essé would have surely known about how much Amidala and Sabé love one another! **7.)** **_Please note_** that that this is **not** a very sane girl and that she glories in hurting other people (and in being hurt, herself, in certain ways)! Most of the rape/torture/murder is implied, rather than graphically described, but if this place had a warning for sociopathy and sado-masochism, I'd add it, too, because Essé more than earns it, even if the piece itself isn't nearly as graphic as it could be! If references to torture tend to be triggering, dear readers, then you might want to seriously consider giving this particular character study a pass!
> 
>  **Story Notes:** **1.)** Since this is part of a larger on-going AU series that in some respects fairly closely mirrors or follows events of canon (up to a certain point, anyway), readers should please keep in mind that certain characters and events from the prequel movies/novelizations of the films and even events/places/people referenced in the EU or Expanded Universe may be mentioned or alluded to in this story. If anyone has any questions about whether someone or something is AU, canon, or EU canon, please feel free to ask! **2.)** Readers should probably be aware that I am roughly estimating (guestimating might be a better word) the original publication date for most of the character study pieces in the **_You Became to Me_** series (and indeed most of my stories, especially the ones written over a long period of time), based on when I roughed out notes for them in the story notebooks I carry everywhere with me and when I can recall having worked on certain groups of characters. The year is going to be accurate, but the month might be off and the day will almost certainly be randomly chosen, since the online account I had originally posted many of these stories to no longer exists. I tend to go back and edit things that are in series whenever I get the time or a new idea causes me to have to make room for something else plot-wise, and odds are good that a story could have been edited for typos as recently as the day of its posting here, but the original version will likely be much older and fairly close to the publication date that I attach to it, if anyone's curious!

**“Essé Seltrin, Tenth Handmaiden in the Second Class for Padmé Amidala”**

 

 **01.) Urge:** All her life, she’s fought against the urge to hurt others, glorying in the sensation of being fully alive only when another is at the mercy of her compassion, and so the decision to get away from Moenia (with its misty gloom all the artists always seemed to find so picturesque and captivating) and her adoptive family (none of whom quite suspect her, yet, though she gets the feeling that it is only a matter of time, if she stays) by going to Theed and getting into politics – where she would be able to control the lives of others from behind the scenes and pull strings and have that same sense of absolute power and of being truly alive, from having others at her mercy, without being in danger of giving herself away to those who might see her predilections as a problem worthy of institutionalization – was a natural choice, for it gave her a chance both to make a good living and to quiet her inner demons while still not revealing herself to anyone (or, worse yet, be driven into doing something worthy of getting herself locked up or exiled for what others would consider her crimes).

 **02.) Basic:** She doesn’t really look much like the girl who’s been elected Queen, other than perhaps in the most basic of senses – same slender build, though she’s a bit chestier; same heart-shaped face, though her skin is naturally more golden-hued, her eyes are a vivid blue with just the barest few stray green flecks in them rather than a plain, solid brown, her nose is not so sharply narrow, her eyebrows have an actual arch to them instead of being virtually flatly angled straight lines, and her bottom lip is a bit fuller; same dark hair, though it’s naturally straight and she’s had her hair treated so that it has some lovely golden highlights to lighten it up a bit, unlike the Queen’s plain, dark nutbrown hair – but then, that’s what cosmetics, dye for the eyes (since with contacts one always run the risk of untimely loss of a lens and/or visual detection of those lenses by others), hair dye from color-crawlers specifically matched to the Queen’s hair color, curlers if necessary (if the Queen doesn’t decide to simply keep her own hair straightened), and the identical, rather plain, form-shrouding uniforms being designed for wear by the handmaidens (as opposed to the eye-catching, distracting, mind-stunningly elaborate costumes designed for the Queen) are all for, for erasing or at least disguising and/or minimizing such differences into a softer, more complete sense of similarity among all of the handmaidens and their Queen.

 **03.) Smart:** She’s easily smart enough to keep her predilections hidden from detection by others, even from the tests designed to catch out the “unsuitable” applicants and the judges who insist on a series of face-to-face meetings to personally check out all of the hopeful candidates personally, so she is not surprised, after her first meeting with Panaka and his people, to know that she’s thought to be a good choice and that Panaka himself (who isn’t the sharpest knife on the cutting block by any stretch of the imagination) considers her a shoe-in for one of the first two classes of potential handmaiden trainees being formed, and she is determined to keep that good opinion and secure just such a position, even after her first meeting with the Queen’s decoy and apparent premiere handmaiden, Sabé Dahn, goes rather less favorably.

 **04.) Sense:** Thanks to Panaka’s unwavering support, she **just** makes it into the second group (despite vehement protestations from Sabé, who, frighteningly enough, insists that she can **tell** that there’s something not right with her), and, though she can tell that there are at least two others in the previous group of trainees who are very much like her and would like to form an alliance with them, she treads very carefully and is sure to keep her head down, her nose clean and to the grindstone, and her mouth shut, because the sense she gets of Sabé makes her skin crawl and her stomach seize with dread, for she is fairly certain that Sabé is one who would kill without compunction in order to protect her own, and that she would, furthermore, consider Essé a threat to her Queen in need of immediate removal.

 **05.) Gorgeous:** The Naberrie Lake House Retreat is so gorgeous and peaceful and fairly teaming with game life (to which she could do such deliciously interesting things, given enough time and space in which to work!) that she’d honestly be just as happy to stay there as to go back to the Palace; they aren’t asking for any volunteers to stay behind to help acclimate or teach the next class of handmaiden potentials coming in for training, though, and she’s still trying not to call any attention to herself, so instead of trying to manufacture a reason to stay behind (or pressure someone else into finding one for her), she quietly packs up her things and gets ready to go back with the others in her class, when they’re told that their training on Varykino is at an end.

 **06.) Interest:** The focus of her class seems to be largely upon the green-eyed redhead who’s a first cousin of the youngest of the Queen’s primary handmaidens, but the girl – who she finds transparently good, passionately dedicated to helping others, and therefore as boring to her as the Queen herself – holds no interest for her, and so she is glad when they get a chance to meet the third class of trainees before they’re to be sent out to the villa and her attention is caught by one named Rosé, with oddly sleepy dark eyes that have just a hint of cruelty lurking at their backs.

 **07.) Serious:** Everyone knows that their job has suddenly become a lot more serious and at least potentially more dangerous, since the old King was found dead in one of his hidey-holes, and everyone agrees that the Trade Federation probably had something to do with the murder, too; yet, even though everyone’s worried about the increasing seriousness of the whole situation with the Trade Federation, no one aside from the five handmaidens who were already in place when the court started taking other applicants for the position of handmaiden seem to realize that their job could actually get them killed, if the Trade Federation gets serious about wanting Naboo’s plasma without having to pay for it, and she can’t quite decide if it’s naïve optimism or sheer willful blindness that’s to blame for this apparent mass act (mad rash, more like!) of stupidity.

 **08.) Target:** She has no intention of making herself a target for Padmé Amidala’s sake, and she knows that those two she noticed earlier are thinking seriously about a coup attempt, but she also thinks that it’ll be even more dangerous to support a coup if the Trade Federation is going to take over than it will be to simply wait until the Trade Federation makes its move and then be sure to be so very cooperative and helpful as to simply find oneself next in line for appointment to an even more powerful position, automatically, with no messy revolution (and, better yet, no personal risk from fighting) required, and so she’s very careful not to do or say anything that might upset the current precarious balance or encourage anyone else to do something to throw everything into chaos, either.

 **09.) Chaos:** When the invasion finally comes, she is and she isn’t expecting it, and, while surprised by the Trade Federations’s boldness, she has no real problem with taking advantage of the chaos they’ve so handily provided, using it as a cover to make her move and cement her alliance with Lietté and Roché, the ones like her in the first handmaiden class. 

**10.) Beautiful:** It’s a beautiful thing, seeing a closet sadist blossom into full understanding of herself, and Lietté has a talent and an understanding and a need for pain that can almost rival her own, making her regret, a little, that she decided to make a bid for the cruel-eyed, seemingly never quite fully awake Rosé and let Roché simply have Lietté without trying for her herself.

 **11.) Indulge:** If anyone had tried to tell her that her decision to become a handmaiden for the new Queen would lead her to a situation where she’d not only be able to stop hiding her peculiar predilections but actually be called upon to indulge in them, for the sake of her position at court and the continued good will of those in power, she would have instantly called for a Minder to come take the crazy away, and it’s all just so very unexpected and like a wondrously beautiful dream, even, in a way, that she can’t help but feel as though the whole of the universe is smiling on her, some days.

 **12.) Sloppy:** Rosé is a little too sloppy, too off-handed, too careless, in her infliction of pain to ever make a truly good interrogator, but there’s no doubting that she enjoys what she does or that she enjoys watching Essé work, for most of their wildest couplings occur after a good long session of prisoner interrogation.

 **13.) Evil:** She doubts her sanity, at first, when she hears that not only are there apparently still Sith living somewhere in the galaxy but that the squeamish cowards of the Trade Federation have apparently allied with them; unfortunately, there’s no doubting that the Zabrak who shows up to try to track down Naboo’s wayward Queen is purely evil . . . or that he is not overly impressed with any of them, even herself.

 **14.) Consideration:** She doesn’t like the way Lietté and Roché have been looking at her, lately, with a cold, hard sort of weighing consideration, as if trying to decide how much more use they can get out of her, and, as an act of precaution against possible treachery, starts to make it a rule never to eat or drink anything that she hasn’t seen someone else partake of safely first.

 **15.) Last:** Her last thought, as the darkness starts to close in around her and she can tell, from the intently fixed expression on Rosé’s face, that this time she isn’t going to stop squeezing her neck in time for her to recover, is that she can’t even properly rail against her fate, since this is entirely her fault, as she never should have forgotten or underestimated how stupidly careless certain people can be . . .

**Author's Note:**

>  **Clarification Note:** One of the reasons why my AU **Star Wars** series _**You Became to Me**_ is so entirely not even nearly complete has to do with the fact that I really started writing at the wrong end of the prequel trilogy for an AU (in my defense, though, when I started what became my _Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith_ trio, which is over a million words long, I thought I was doing a sort of one-shot fix-it based on an idea I got for "fixing" RotS by changing something that happens very near the end of James Luceno's EU novel _Labyrinth of Evil_ , which is set immediately prior to RotS). One of these days, I fully intend to rectify that problem by going back and starting from the beginning, with an AU rewrite of TPM, which is why I took the time to do a character study sketch for a supporting character like Essé. She'll be showing up again, in a more prominent role, whenever I get around to that AU rewrite of TPM. Folks might want to keep that in mind when reading this, since technically this is spoilerish for an AU novel that I haven't gotten around to writing yet!


End file.
